Get ready for Cannes Lions 2024—the advertising industry is buzzing with excitement. This year’s event promises to be a center of innovation, ideas, and networking. Here are five themes we expect will take center stage in conversations and how Experian can help marketers be prepared for what’s ahead.
Cookie deprecation and signal loss
At Cannes Lions 2024, the theme of transitioning to a cookieless advertising ecosystem is likely to dominate discussions. The saga of cookie deprecation continues to unfold, with Google recently pushing back the demise of third-party cookies once again.
Experian remains fully committed to prioritizing continued testing of different industry solutions, including the Google Privacy Sandbox, to help customers prepare for a future without cookies. We’ve identified six viable alternatives to third-party cookies, how these alternatives fall short, and how Experian can help you navigate these alternatives.
With Experian, the loss of cookies does not equate to a loss of coverage. With our strong roots in offline data and significant investments in our Graph, Experian ensures uninterrupted and effective marketing with robust signal coverage, with or without cookies. Based on early tests, we expect our Graph to maintain 97% of its household coverage. Read how MiQ, a leader in the cookieless era, strengthened its Identity Spine with the integration of Experian’s cross-device Graph here.
Commerce
The theme of commerce is poised to be a central topic of discussion at Cannes Lions 2024, reflecting the emergence and growth of retail media networks (RMNs). Evolving customer expectations are a key driver, with consumers demanding seamless and personalized experiences across all touchpoints of their shopping journey. The importance of bridging physical and digital experiences to create a cohesive customer journey will undoubtedly feature prominently in discussions at Cannes.
Experian’s Consumer Sync offerings facilitate seamless integration between online and in-person interactions, fostering a cohesive approach to engaging audiences across various platforms while measuring campaign effectiveness.
As we heard at Shoptalk 2024, the evolution of retail media is propelling us into a new era of advertising and first-party data monetization. The integration of e-commerce with advertising presents an exciting opportunity for brands to drive direct sales through ads displayed within retail platforms, blurring the lines between marketing and commerce.
Our Consumer View solutions provide access to over 5,000 demographic and behavioral data points, enriching your customer profiles for deeper insights. By combining first-party data with Experian’s industry-leading data sets, you can create bespoke audience segments that drive increased return on investment (ROI), going beyond conventional category-based targeting strategies.
Looking ahead, the future outlook for RMNs remains promising, with anticipated growth and expansion as brands increasingly recognize the value of reaching consumers precisely at the point of purchase.
Connected TV
At Cannes Lions 2024, we anticipate discussions to focus on how connected TV (CTV) can continue to live up to its promise. CTV is the most rapidly expanding advertising channel in the U.S and 95% of advertisers plan to increase their share of spend on programmatic CTV in 2024, according to The Trade Desk’s latest CTV report. The growing adoption of CTV among viewers, driven by factors like quality content, reduced ad interruptions, and cost-saving alternatives to traditional cable, signals a shift in consumer behavior that marketers cannot afford to overlook.
Experian supports the growth of advertising interest in CTV through our signal-agnostic Graph that connects CTV IDs, universal IDs like Unified I.D. 2.0 (UID2), IPs, and mobile ad IDs (MAIDs) for effective activation. Our digital identity resolution with Activity Feed provides insights into CTV viewership behavior, linking CTV exposure to e-commerce conversions.
CTV also enables greater collaboration, and we’ve recently announced new partnerships with CTV industry leaders Microsoft, Samsung, Attain, Sonobi, and EDO.
Consumer privacy
Consumers are increasingly aware of privacy concerns surrounding their data and numerous laws are going into effect across the U.S. at the state level. Most recently, there has been momentum on a federal data privacy law. We expect consumer privacy to be a significant topic of discussion at Cannes Lions 2024, reflecting the growing importance of ethical data practices in advertising.
In a recent Q&A with Datavant, Jeremy Meade, VP of Marketing Data & Product Operations at Experian, highlights the importance of balancing data privacy and utility, focusing on “data for good” practices while using de-identification techniques to support research without compromising consumer privacy.
Our Geo-Indexed audiences are an example of how Experian can help you reach your audience while balancing data privacy and accuracy. Our Geo-Indexed audiences combine location data with audience insights to deliver targeted marketing solutions. These audiences are created without the use of sensitive personal information, so you can confidently reach your target audience without sacrificing data privacy.
With deep roots in data protection and security, you can confidently partner with Experian as we proactively stay ahead of regulations and strictly follow all consumer privacy laws.
Campaigns and competition
The theme of campaigns and competition is poised to be an important discussion point, driven by the convergence of major global events like the U.S. presidential election and this summer’s games—both occurring once every four years. These landmark occasions present opportunities for marketers to craft targeted campaigns that resonate with specific audience segments.
As we approach the 2024 election season, the advertising landscape is primed for growth, with political ad spending projected to exceed $10 billion. Effective audience targeting during this crucial period can sway voters, shape public opinion, and influence election outcomes. Experian’s 240+ politically relevant syndicated audiences, including our 10 political personas, enable a nuanced understanding of voter viewpoints and empower tailored engagement strategies to connect more effectively with constituents.
At the same time, this summer’s games in Paris offer a unique opportunity for sports marketing. With one billion viewers expected to tune in, the global spectacle presents a platform to engage with passionate sports audiences worldwide. Using Experian’s syndicated audiences, marketers can precisely target sporting goods shoppers, avid fans, athletes, and spectators alike.
The combination of these major events emphasizes the need for careful planning and data-driven strategies and marketers should take advantage of the excitement surrounding both events.
Follow uson LinkedIn orsign up for our email newsletterfor more informative content on the latest industry insights and data-driven marketing.
Latest posts
Usually a new year means looking ahead – it’s a fresh start where marketers look forward to making the most of their business resolutions for the new year. This post is anything but that – we’re asking marketers – specifically retailers – to take a look back at the Holiday selling season because there are a few steps to take in order to finish out strong and THEN start the new year off right. Kamal Tahir, director of product management at Experian Marketing Services, has outlined steps retailers can take to end the year – and start the new one strong. He outlines specific steps retailers can take to get ahead of their competition and keep the holiday sales momentum going strong into the new year. For example, have you thought about how to address product returns? Giftcard redemption? Rewarding loyal customers? Read about the steps you should take to close out your 2011 Holiday season and improve your chances for an even stronger 2012 in his article on Retail Online Integration’s website at http://www.retailonlineintegration.com/article/happy-post-holidays-marketers-5-focus-areas-how-make-count/1. Happy New Year!
If you live in an early primary or caucus state, you’ve probably already had your fill of political advertising. According to The Washington Post, politicians and political groups spent more than $23 million on campaign television ads as of December 1, 2011. With record ad spending predicted for the 2012 election, the rest of the nation will soon be bombarded with television ads “approved by” politicians from the left, right and the center of the political spectrum. Candidates and those groups that support them need to know where to allocate their ad dollars to either connect with their base or reach swing voters. Experian Simmons analyzed the viewing audiences of over 600 broadcast, cable and syndicated TV programs that were measured in our most recent National Consumer Study in order to pinpoint opportunities for politicians to reach partisans and middle of the road voters. This analysis has already gathered the attention of major media outlets, including Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, AOL, Huffington Post and more. Below are the entertainment and news programs that score the highest concentration of liberal Democrats among their viewers, Conservative Republicans and Middle-of-the-Road Voters registered with any party. Be sure to check out our free 2011 PoliticalPersonas report in which Experian Simmons delivers the mindset of the American voter, including attitudes, brand preferences and their penchant for social media. You can also check out a similar analysis of TV preferences of political partisans that we conducted last year here and here.
Social media continues to be one of the fastest growing industries online. Between September 2010 and September 2011 visits to Social Networks and Forums have increased by nearly 11% and, if you saw my Internet clock blog last month, social media accounts for nearly a quarter of all time spent online. But when are people engaging with social media the most? We took a look at the UK Internet visits to the Social Networks and Forums category each month between 2009 and 2011. We then averaged those visits across the months to see the seasonal trends with social media. What this shows is that social media usage is at its lowest at the beginning of the year and climbs throughout the course of the year towards a peak in December. Over the last three years December has always seen the peak of online visits and in fact last Christmas Day Facebook overtook Google for the first time ever in terms of UK Internet visits. We know that Christmas is a very social time and a time for sharing messages with loved ones, friends and family, so the increased visits to social networks during December is to be expected. More generally, what this graph shows is that social media observes two seasonal trends. The first is an early summer peak in visits in June, before a decline in visits in July and August. This seasonal dip in July and August can be explained by summer holidays where people are more likely to go abroad and therefore less likely to be using social networks. The second seasonal trend is a recovery in visits in September and October before a yearly peak at Christmas. With students starting university terms, kids going back to school, and the working population returning from holiday this would account for the increased interaction in September and October before the Christmas surge. In particular what we’ve seen in September data is a resurgence in market share of visits to Facebook, which bounced back after the summer dip to account for nearly 52% of all visits to a social network. The message here for brands who want to capitalise on social media traffic is to start implementing their social strategy now rather than waiting for Christmas. As October is the second busiest month of the year for social media visits we are expecting over 800 million hours to be spent on social networks this month, which represents a huge opportunity to engage with new and existing customers online. Follow Hitwise UK on Twitter.